EU climate targets

Conservative MEPs hijack parliamentary report on EU emissions

The European Parliament today failed to adopt a report on the EU's climate change policy, after the final report was rejected by a majority of MEPs. The Greens were forced to vote against an originally strong draft, after centre-right amendments aimed at fundamentally weakening the report and previous positions adopted by the European Parliament were passed by a narrow majority. After the vote, Green MEP Bas Eickhout, who had been the draftsman of the draft report, said:

"It is with great regret that I was forced to recommend MEPs to reject my own report after it was hijacked by amendments from conservative and centre-right MEPs. The amendments, which passed by the tightest of majorities, would have meant the final report was a step back from previous positions adopted by the European Parliament and, as a result, the least-worst outcome was to prevent the report being adopted.

"It is extremely frustrating that conservative and centre-right MEPs continue to keep their heads in the sand with regard to climate policy. It is clear that the EU's current 20% emissions target for 2020 is completely obsolete and that the EU needs to deliver on its pledges and step up to a 30% reduction target. It is holding Europe back, undermining the EU's emissions trading scheme, and acting as a barrier to proactive emissions reductions efforts and investments in green technologies, and hence job creation. The European Commission itself made this case last year. Clearly, there are plenty of climate dinosaurs in the EP, who refuse to acknowledge that tougher emissions targets are necessary and who, as a result, are holding back green growth in the EU."